Commute

 Well....my second Biblical counselor, it seems, has washed his hands of me.

 

 

I ended up with two Biblical counselors because one guy in the church was getting ready to graduate from college and he needed test subjects, basically
So.. ya.  He told me I had to be committed and...I'm not.  So...the end.

I do need to be more intentional about Bible reading.  I intend to write out my thoughts on what I read.  I'm intending it to be daily. I don't feel in control of what I end up doing.  I'll just leave it there.  I don't feel like trying to convince anybody of what and who I am.

3 steps forward, 2 steps back....daz how IB rollE'n

 well.....I managed to keep from gazing into the depths of sin 2 days out of the 5 days of this week (so far).  I sunk Sunday afternoon, Monday night and again very early Wednesday morning.  Gosh.  Talk about making up for lost time :////

Alrighty.  God still has 1 point over Satan.  Not a very wide margin of victory, not the kind He deserves.  I should be more faithful to Him.  I hope.

bluetooth keyboard

 typing this trying out my bluetooth keyboard.

so far so good.  still can benefit from getting used to.

hopefully i'll be able and willing to type using this if I feel inclined to say something that I don't feel at ease enough typing with touchscreen.

It's MOVEMENT!!!! HE'S ON THE MOVE! YEA!

WARNING - kinda gross.  I'm not the emobidment of holiness I should be.  My mind goes waaaay off the straight and narrow path onto some pretty dark and sometimes just downright obscence places and sometimes for too long a time.

The good news is I went SIX DAYS without indulging into them "gratifying the desires of my flesh" (I'm using "flesh" in a literal sense here, not the ambiguous manner of speaking that you might be prone to interpret that in if you find out "Well, the Greek word used actually means...")

SIX 

I know, I know. Like "Seriously?  I haven't done that ____" in decades!!  You're just now at the SIX DAY mark?  Dude, you've been going to church for 10 years now and you're STILL  a pathetic sonofaflugga"

Ok, so I'm still growing.  LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTS of room for improvement.  

But compared to before I acknowledged God --- every day --- AT LEAST 7 days a week (usually)
After I came to recognize God, I think maybe it went down to 6 days a week max.
After I got more burdened to be more proactive against this sinfulness, it was like 4 times a week.

Since I've been getting counseling from a young man whose more mature in the faith than I can expect to be,
---- it's been down to like 3 x a week.  The previous week that ended slightly over a week ago (today is a Monday), it was down to TWICE(!)

I did succumb to the temptation yesterday.  THAT I am by no means proud of or exclaiming.  The fact is I went SIX DAYS without doing so.
My aim is to make it AT LEAST 9.  Hopefully I can stretch it to 10 or 11.  YO!

GOD IS ON THE MOVE!!!

"destroooooy!"

 

I personally don't think Michael Jackson's 1991 album DANGEROUS was worth a #1 spot on any music chart.  It was a good album.  It was perhaps even a GREAT album.  It did a good job at giving Mr. Jackson a singer/songwriter kind of outlet while at the same time being bombastic and flashy enough to be commercially viable while also being in line with the then-current musical trends, perhaps more so than it should've.  

However, it is LIGHT years ahead of the album that people look to as the PRIME - example of music consumers change in taste.  The album that "famously"/"infamously" knocked Michael Jackson's DANGEROUS off of the #1 spot on the Billboard album chart.

I can't say the changing musical tide was necessarily a bad thing.  Lots of good music was being successfully well marketed alongside Nirvana's 1991 breakthrough album NEVERMIND.  Sponge's 1994 album ROTTING PINATA, Soul Asylum's GRAVE DANCERS' UNION (1992), the first 4 albums by Counting Crows, and then of course the countless seminal emo albums, many of which gave me a small sense of belonging back in my final year of high school and the years i would've traditionally been in college, before I turned my attention to God, years later.

Most of the music I like probably would have existed in some fashion or another with or without Nirvana.  HOWEVER, with Nirvana, and more importantly, the FAME OF Nirvana, music that I probably would never have known existed became very difficult to ignore.  Green Day's 1995 album INSOMNIAC probably would have been a cassette only release available only in record shops nearby where the band is from, wherever that is (I may or may not look that up later).  Green Day took the plunge into major label recording because of Nirvana's example.  I mean, it's not like I would have been destitute had I not heard Sponge's "Plowed" or Live's 'All Over You", or Bush's "Swallowed", but then again; when I get to thinking about it --- I saw a movie, well, most of it, from 1986 titled RIVER'S EDGE.  It was about a bunch of misfit kids whose loyalties become divided when some of them start wrestling with their conscience, considering what course of action to take when one of their friends ends up killing his girlfriend.  Those kids LIVED OUT the destructive lifestyle that is common in bands like Nirvana and Green Day.  Not only did they do things that were harmful to their health, but their whole mentality was on the cusp of being sunk forever.  Some of them had already reached that point and the characters in that film ranged from 11 to 19 years in age (apprx).  I'm 37 and I have, statistically speaking if you just go by health data from recent history, another 50 years in my life.  My head is not forever sunk, at least too far to be recovered, I don't think.  Yes, I have some bad habits in my thinking patterns and my ideals are a bit warped, even though I have an opposing ideology to contend with which intellectually I find to be far superior, but I do have an ever present sense of optimism that has kept me on guard toward the possibilities and the promise of what life can be and should be.  I can't and often don't do anything to make justice in this world, but I do believe it is not impossible for people in the positions of power to do so and I truly am flabbergasted that they don't, but in the end it all comes down to habits.  One mild vice can be an encouragement for others to take that vice to an extreme yet uncharted.  I stand guilty.  My point is if i did not have an outlet to safely explore "the wild side", I don't think I would have been safe.  I think I would have been lonely and desperate to find a sense of "real"ness in the company of people such as those in RIVER'S EDGE.  It's also possible that I would have simply been disassociated from everything I know, more so than I am already as it is.  A lot of melodious pretty songs came out in the 1980s, but most of it was ultimately stuff that I don't resonate with personally.  I hear stuff like "Always Something There To Remind Me" by Naked Eyes or "Shattered Dreams" by Johnny Hates Jazz, and I don't connect with it emotionally.  It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling, but songs from when I was in my late teens/early 20s, stuff like DREAM TO MAKE BELIEVE by Armor For Sleep and THE FORGOTTEN ARM by Aimee Mann (who has had a tough as nails time getting the recognition she should even with the alt rock tide of the 1990s), stuff that really struck a chord with me and actually caused a WHOOM to my psyche, rather than just a ringing of ear candy, probably would have been a lot harder to discover had it not been for the crescendo of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" that got the world talking about alternative rock.

Really? NOTHING??

 There's a number of Christian songs that have lyric(s) such as "This world has nothing for me"...I really wish people would quit presenting those as worship songs.  I know God is not in the wind or the waves, nor is He limited to the charactaeristics of gold, cows, or cow-shaped gold and we should do whatever it takes, individually, to avoid cherry picking God's characteristics when we worship Him.  To not do so, one is at risk of violating the 2nd commandment.  True, we should also help others with their spirit-centered endeavors, but to idealize a complete disregard for all that God has given us is almost as blasphemous as idolatry.  The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the music we knowingly hear, the people who warm our hearts, the epic tales we read about, it all is a gift from God.  Yes, they are all stained by sin.  If God justifies us, the ones who are responsible for this sin stain that effects everything in the world, why does anyone choose to reject what God has given TO US???  Yes, we need to keep in mind that this world is fading away and regardless of when that finally happens, we are not going to be here for a very long time at all.  Life seems long because of impatience.  If you look down the road past a point where you can't see and aren't focused on the view in between, you are at risk of colliding with oncoming traffic.  I honestly don't think there's anything fatal about being apathetic about God's Earthly creations.  Salvation awaits anyone who loves God, but I do find lyrics such as "This world has nothing for me" better suited for private listening.  There are verses in scripture that do make it seem like Jesus wanted us to forsake everything about the world except our neighbors and The Holy Spirit, but it can also be interpreted that Jesus wanted us to pay attention to Him.  People walked up to the Almighty Savior and started marveling TO HIM AT the beautiful buildings in Jerusalem.  Jesus wasn't arguing that the buildings were NOT beautiful.  He was making a contrast about the buildings and the person being spoken to about the buildings.  He could have been self exalting and said "Hey, doofus!  THIS IS THE SON OF GOD ALMIGHTY YOU'RE TALKING TO!  I'M ALWAYS GOING TO BE HERE!  THESE STONES AREN'T!"  He took a gentler approach, which I find admirable, even though I've been known to be more like Rush Limbaugh in the way I talk (thanks to my mom, I'm not arrogant enough to accept a weekly paycheck for doing so although I once was, thanks be to God that I no longer believe I would do something like that...except maybe if that were the ONLY other way to have any income.....but even then...idk....the heart IS exceedingly wicked and also deceptively so.  People often think better of their character than they have any business doing and I try to avoid making bold claims such as "Id never___"   )

Aaaanyway.
Kind of a small topic especially considering my absence.

...sry :/

HOMEWORK (book2) Galatians 5: 16 - 24

 

May 26

Scott's counseling on this passage was quite illuminating.
The Apostle Paul was basically saying that if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law, but you will be better off and so will everyone else if you follow the leading of the spirit.  Obedience is not required, but it is EXTREMELY beneficial and nonetheless destructive.  I think people who are not saved are less likely to become acquainted with Jesus if we ignore the spirit's leading.  I mean, I know most people are just going to fall blindly into a pit because they simply don't care, at least not in a good way.  A lot of people do care, but they care in a scornful and disdaining manner, so as to resist God's will for their life and run to the arms of death.  That's unfortunately how things are.  We are therefore to pray for our enemies and bless those who persecute us.  It won't work with everyone and sometimes they'll need to witness the miracle of Christ at work in His people over and over to really appreciate it or even recognize it.  We must submit.

But it really is amazing that our acts of vileness, our moments of searing anger, our sexual folly, our moments of gluttony, do not cancel out the LOVE that Christ Jesus allows God The Father to have for us by His constant intercession on our behalves.

THANK YOU LORD!

May 31
Well...haven't been doing my homework as instructed, obviously...
The first segment of Gal5:16-24 is kind of confusing.  It says "walk by the spirit".  Egh.  I don't know.  I keep getting confused by these instructions.  Jesus paid for all of our sin yet the New Testament adds instructions galore.  I've heard people talk about disobeying God's commandments like you're not a Christian if you sin.  Saying things like "Well, you don't even have a God if you're just doing whatever you want"  Like....surre.....Why does God say that He will give you the desires of your heart if "whatever I want" is so damning?  Yes, I understand sin is evil and God hates it.  I also understand that I am not God and I never will be God and I will never live to the standard of Christ so long as I live.  Physically, I am capable of that.  If I took God's commands and I adhered to them as if He IS God, MY God, my commander in chief and everything beyond and along it, like a 20star general who isn't secretly a traitor, yes, I would never sin.  If I did, it would be like once every 5 years or less often.  You can't dish out criticism like that and take yourself seriously without being downright dishonest.  Ok, so maybe Charles Stanley has reached this point in his life where sin (not just sexually immoral acts, which apparently sometimes gets abbreviated to "sin" so that it doesn't sound so ...pornographic, I guess?) is so appalling that he just never engages in it.  As for 99.9999% of the world, I don't see that playing out.  Yes, the Christian's fruit will grow as he goes, but there is no indication in The Bible of what the extent and frequency of that growth is to be.
AAAnyway.......talking with this guy from church has really been helpful at getting that rhetoric off my heart.  I don't see much improvement this week compared to last.  Maybe a 2% upward tick in goodness, but I don't know if it's even that much.  It might be like 7% worse than it was the week before.  idk.  I haven't been watching X rated hardcore stuff, but I've been dabbling in movies about people that meet and go wild over each other for x period of time until whenever.....idk.  I'm not proud of this by any means, but I don't see a way out that I would consider amicable.  I know sex isn't everything, but it really seems like the more I resist, the more it burns into my heart.  ug.  I do need to rejoice in the distance I've created between me & hardcore smut, because I was simply engaging way too much with that and it was time consuming and also drawing out the temptation to physically carry out some of the stuff I was watching, which is not something I am in a position to be messing with, unless I were to concede to the "pro-choice" movement that abortion isn't that big of a thing......of course, "that big" is a relative term.  Christ will forgive any sin.  Murder isn't any worse than a host of other sins.  Murder is basically the absence of a person from this Earth.  A baby is just a person who hasn't accomplished anything, good or bad.  If two non believers have a one night stand and conceive a child, and all the big hearted Christians, who have asked in faith and received abundantly The Holy Spirit, are being called to deal with things other than this baby whose life probably hangs in the balance, the world would probably not be at much of a loss if that baby was aborted.  I am not saying God wouldn't care, but I'm saying if people will bad choices that will have huge ramifications against humanity, that means one of two things 1) The End is near 2) God stopped it from happening.  There's also maybe a third possibility that might be too complicated to even begin writing about.  I'm not even sure I'm getting what I'm saying effectively communicated as it is.  And this is all just speculation.  The Old Testament when it talks about the penalty for murder, and how to distinguish a murderer from someone who was just being a tad careless, it does insinuate something along the lines of the hypothetical scenario I described, but society is a very complicated web of words actions thoughts and feelings and many of them intersect in ways that we can't fully understand in the present tense, much less try to predict.  The example I gave is a very bare bones basic example that probably isn't even accurate because of the extent of how bare the bones are, to continue the metaphor, but the idea that things are happening and are going to happen that God knows about, and can manipulate IF THEY ARE WILLING.  Obviously, God doesn't need to get express consent from His people, and we, usually not having the slightest clue how our present circumstances advance God's kingdom (or not), we can't say we would say "No" if we knew what was really going on and how it makes perfect sense when it's all over.  But there are many people who just don't care.  Their hearts are hardened and they have no willingness to get to know God or even OF God, and have nothing to give to this decaying world except more decay.  If there's 1,000 Christians (extremely low number, just an example,k?) who are spread over 2 large counties in a medium sized state in the USA, and there's 9,000 people who are just blindly walking off the cliffs, and there's 7,000 people who want to hear the word but might not even know they want to hear it because they have no knowledge of their ignorance (?!) --- those 1,000 people all need to be ON FIRE for God, absolutely committed to serving and laying down their life at any opportunity in order for all 7,000 people who are ambiguously pro-Christ to be saved by the hands of men.  God might intervene on their behalf regardless, but we have no reason to assume that just based on what The Bible says.  Jesus does say that we will be judged according to our deeds.  So if anyone out there is doing what they "know" to be right and not just flaking it, then, I hypothesize that God will step in and rescue them, but again, we as Christians cannot rely on that scenario.  We must step up!  I must step up.  I'm not much good to anyone at this point tho.  I have sinned.  I still need to request forgiveness from My Heavenly Father.  I'm sorry, Lord Jesus.

JUNE 1
My evil desires got the best of me and I broke out into total savagery.  Not sure if the Ever Accountable software picked up that, but I'll have to wait and see what becomes of that.  I need to quit this nonsense.
I wanted to take a nap but my dang rib is loose or something.  I almost went to the emergency room, but my mom and my sister talked it over and decided it's PROBABLY not an **emergency** but it's something a doctor should probably look at and see what can be done if anything.  If it's a broken rib, from what I know, there's not MUCH they can do...but maybe they can help me keep from furthering the damage so that someday it'll heal.  I fell the other day just basically walking on this sidewalkless Earth......can't even be safe just taking a freakin' walk.  I don't even know what caused it  I think I basically just tripped over my feet but I don't know if there was a semi-halfway decent reason for that, like I was trying to avoid moving toward a car or if I was just so lost in my thoughts that I just wasn't paying enough attention to where my feet were....idk..
One good thing for sure tho, I definitely won't want to have sex in this state.  One point for celibacy, one point for THE UNBORN, and point for...endurance or whatever the motto "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is referred to as in The Bible...maybe it's not referred to in The Bible...idk.

Anyway......
ffmm
Uh...yeah.  I suck.  What else is new?  idk.....
I feel like a fake for saying further, like "I'm sorry".  I don't feel uplifted.  Saying "Thank you Jesus" just feels robotic.  They're both true, but those coexisting statements don't really run over well out loud individually.  As far as I know, there's no phrase that encompasses both.  "Please, Lord, may this sin be put to death"  I guess that's one way of wording it.  Idk.  I actually prayed for forgiveness etc. before I started writing this.
hmmmmmmmmmm.......idk.  I guess that's it.  I should probably talk about other life stuff in a separate blog post.

JUNE 6TH

Up until Friday, and again, this afternoon, I was doing rather well with my mental celibacy.  I'd gone all day Wednesday, Thursday and most of Friday....not a huge improvement over the norm, but still....eh...
I really hope I can keep from sinking again on Tuesday.  If I could go Monday Tues Wed AND Thrs, that'd be soupppppur.  But if I can at least go MT&W, that'd be...something....ish...
Idk.

JUNE 8TH

Failed again.
RRRR..........and I'd just been doing rather well, reading two chapters of Isiah, getting all in the spirit of it..........but I guess that was like 6 hours ago....or 4...not sure what time that was...
I really have no idea what to make of Paul's sympathetic statement about doing what he doesn't want and not doing what he wants etc.....based on how vehement he is about sexual sin, it seems hard to imagine he's talking about that....but on the other hand WHAT Is he talking about?  Is he saying he feels hate when he wants to be all about love or that he doubts God's goodness when he wants to trust God with all his heart?  (sigh)  I know those are things I should be more concerned about.......still feel like I got a lightyear to go.  I really would be surprised if I live to be 70.  I hope I can at least get to a point where I care more about that than I currently do about things such as this greedy desire......(s).........

Weekly recap Friday 21st

 Uyyy
I don't know how to mark my improvement.  Maybe things are slightly better than the week before.  Maybe.  It seems like I did go 2.5 days if not longer without delving into porn, but then I was rummaging through Amazon Prime trying to get the dark corners to the surface....since they don't make it very easy to find the kind of stuff that is audacious enough to really capture my attn.
eeg.  I'm sinking, obviously.  I wonder if I'm just a black sheep, destined to not follow His Voice.

I know I'm not showing the hallmarks of Godly sorrow for I have not been zealous and active in repenting.  I don't know what I'm missing.  I think I understand as much as I "need" to understand...maybe it's a lack of faith.  Maybe I'm just too lazy.  Regardless, I might not make it.  I don't know.

Shut Up & get to work

I seriously need to quit talking.  Nobody wants to know what I'm thinking or feeling.  I need to "prefer others" as "think of others as more important" than myself.  If I'm not acting on God's behalf, nothing I say matters.  I need to quit burdering my family with texts and emails.  Nobody cares.  They don't have to.  They got a whole universe beyond me to think about.  I need to just make do with what I have and quit asking for rides, asking for help acquiring this or that. 

sick venal ...all the animals at night

 eeeikg

Fudd'd up again today, and I knew what I needed to do to avoid it but I was an awful distraction of determined and lazy....determined to stay on course and too lazy to pick up the crap I'd left on my bed.  At some point not long after the climactic finale of my immorality, I finally did have to pick up the small assortment of things that were on my bed and move them so I could take a 3 hour nap  ug.

I mainly came to this URL to note something I've noticed about my brain, but I figured I'd confess my failures too..........not entirely sure why, I just don't feel like it'd be truthful to continue without acknowledging that.  I guess one benefit is if you want to avoid "immoral men like Esau", you have more information to help you decide about reading any further...

aaaNyway,
I've noticed my memories of the past few years have been kind of blurring together.  Like, it seriously seems like I ordered Elevation Worship's HERE AS IN HEAVEN while I was living in Loganville (Georgia), but according to the order history on Amazon, I was actually living in Lawrenceville.  Like, I remember sitting against that white stone wall that I had in my basement at my desk asking the seller to cancel that order and reading their response, but that email is apparently a combination of multiple memories.  I don't know how they got mixed up as they did, but that's apparently what happened.
I reckon my memory will only get worse over the next 5 years :/